On Tactical Voting

Calton is not generally in favour of tactical voting however he is preparing to make an exception for the Holyrood election next year. He has been helped to this decision by a couple of things.

Firstly, it is becoming increasingly clear that the SNP must be defeated at all costs. If they are not, Scotland will become a police state where only views acceptable to the SNP are allowed and we will also have the continued, divisive agitation for another independence referendum while education, the NHS and the economy are ignored.

Secondly, it is highly likely that the current SNP selection process will result in a bunch of woke candidates made in Nicola Sturgeon's image, in spite of the #dontvotewoke campaign being waged by one faction of the party. This makes it easier for Calton to vote for a woke unionist candidate, if they are the one best placed to defeat the SNP in his constituency. Normally he wouldn't touch woke with a bargepole however needs must.

Lastly, the idea of an anti-nationalist coalition is one whose time has come. The silent majority is silent no longer. George Galloway has stirred things up good and proper and Alliance for Unity will be getting Calton's list vote. The traditional unionist parties are so far showing no sign of entering into any election pacts, preferring to split the vote and let the SNP in as usual, however their voters are starting to think differently. If Alex Salmond or the care home scandal don't bring Sturgeon down, her hubris in expecting another term in office may well do the trick. If Labour, the Tories and the Libdems suffer some collateral damage in the process they have only themselves to blame.

Is the SNP Good for Families?

Nicola Sturgeon is currently claiming that she wants everyone to have a family Christmas but is the SNP good for families in general?

Not if you want to be a stay-at-home Mum. The SNP's policies are all geared around getting women back to work as soon as possible with increased nursery provision. The trouble is, the times don't always suit working Mums and the provision is patchy as it relies heavily on the private sector (and this was before Covid made life even more difficult for nurseries).

Not if you don't want your child to be exposed to pornographic sex education and transgender ideology. The SNP looks with scorn on parents who express concern about these issues, to the extent of calling them bigots for not getting on the woke bandwagon.

Not if you want to raise your children free from state interference. The SNP have abandoned their Named Person legislation due to data sharing concerns however they still believe that the state knows best and parents are not the most important people in a child's life.

Not if you want to choose how you discipline your children - the SNP have now outlawed even the lightest smack and will shortly be criminalising parents, in spite of their promises not to. They are also encouraging children to report their parents. This is state interference in family life on a grand scale and it won't stop with smacking - it will eventually extend to children reporting their parents if they get put on the naughty step, or sent to bed early, or are denied that extra sweetie. Children's rights trump parent's rights in SNP land. That doesn't make for happy families.

Not if you want to have a three-generational Christmas dinner round an actual dinner table - the SNP are warning us to get ready for a "digital Christmas". Calton can't think of anything sadder or more horrible. He also can't think of anything more likely to spark mass civil disobedience!

Not if you want to see an elderly relative in a care home. Having killed off a lot of grandparents by transferring Covid positive people out of hospital into care homes, the SNP are now paranoid and the restrictions around care home visits, not to mention the conditions within care homes, with residents effectively in solitary confinement, are now inhumane for residents and their families.

Not if you want to see your student son or daughter for Christmas. Having bowed to pressure from universities and let students return in September, even although they could have studied from home, the SNP are now faced with the problem of how to let them go home safely after Covid has rampaged through campuses. A problem which could have been foreseen and avoided.

No, the SNP are not good for families.

Is the SNP Good for Women?

 Calton was prompted to write this post after seeing that one hopeful SNP candidate was not approved by the party because of her views on transgender issues and another was asked who would look after her children if she was elected. Both were women. Now, one would think that, with a female leader who claims to be a feminist, the SNP would be a positive environment for women, supportive of their rights and encouraging of their aims. Not so. In her race to be seen as the most woke leader in the western world, Nicola Sturgeon has abandoned her sex. Let's have a look at the evidence.

She claims that her plans to make it easy for men to self-identify as women do not clash with her feminism, however many feminists would disagree. They think, and Calton agrees, that the radical trans ideaology which Sturgeon is pursuing not only threatens women's safe spaces but threatens the very definition of a woman and all the hard-won rights which go with it. The Scottish Government's Gender Reform Act (GRA) may be on the back burner for now but, make no mistake, it will be back with a vengeance if the SNP get a majority in Holyrood next year. The fact that the First Minister has twice invited best friend and minister responsible for the GRA Shirley-Anne Somerville onto her daily briefing in the last fortnight confirms this. It also demonstrates that if you support the GRA, you get the support of the leader of the SNP in your battle to be reselected. If you don't support the GRA, forget it. (Somerville is being targeted by the #dontvotewoke campaign as she tries to hang on to Dunfermline and West Fife.)

Joanna Cherry is another woman who has questioned the party's policy on transgender issues. She wanted to stand for Edinburgh Central next year but the SNP NEC changed the rules, effectively preventing her from doing so. Much has been made of the Salmond/Sturgeon divisions within the SNP but the real faultline is the woke/non-woke one, which has spawned the #dontvotewoke hashtag on twitter, referring to the current selection contests for SNP candidates. It is well known that Stuart Campbell is no fan of Nicola's however his comments on the candidate selection process are still worth reading. Further evidence that the SNP leader is not good for women is the emergence of the SNP Women's Pledge, which would not be needed if Sturgeon truly supported women. They are supporting non-woke candidates.

Calton could say more on issues such as the child-care question posed to a female candidate, how Alex Salmond's sleazy, but not illegal, behaviour was overlooked by senior women in the SNP in order not to damage the cause of independence and how the SNP have shown a complete lack of trust in women's ability to bring up their own children without government intervention (the named persons and smacking legislation) but this post is already long enough. Perhaps another day ...

Policy-making on the High Heel

 If Calton had to pick one thing which demonstrates that Nicola Sturgeon is making it up as she goes along, it would be Thursday's announcement that masks should be worn in work canteens as of Friday but masks in corridors don't need to be worn until Monday. This is not just policy-making on the high heel, it's stupidity on stilts. If masks were required in canteens two days ago, except when eating, why the delay in requiring masks in corridors, which are usually more enclosed than a canteen? It's no surprise that a large part of the population now has no clue what they are supposed to be doing to avoid the spread of Covid. The clear messaging which the First Minister prided herself on has descended into a fog of stupid rules in spite of her continued daily appearances on our TV screens, thanks to the craven BBC.

Scotland has been locked down harder and for longer than England thanks to Sturgeon's fear and it has resulted in no real difference in infections north and south of the border, and yet she continues with her MacBoris approach - simply putting a kilt on what the Prime Minister does. He is not getting it right and neither is she. Lockdowns only work when they are in operation. When they are lifted, the virus continues its merry way. If the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed a temporary lockdown will help. Otherwise it's just ruining the economy, putting people out of work and causing excess deaths through cancer etc for sweet nothing. We are not preventing Covid deaths with the current strategy - we are simply delaying them and causing other deaths in the meantime.

We need to stop kidding ourselves on that we can control this virus and we need to stop looking to a vaccine as a magic bullet. We can't afford to keep paying workers who can't work and businesses who can't open due to government edicts and so the edicts need to stop. We should switch our attention instead to protecting the vulnerable as much as we can while learning to accept that opportunistic infections kill the elderly and vulnerable - always have, always will. If we don't, we will end up with millions unemployed, isolated, lonely, sick and dying from diseases which were preventable, unlike Covid.

Independence transcends ...

Nicola Sturgeon was being more than a little disingenous today when she admitted to a limited amount of politicisation of her daily "Covid" briefings on the basis that she's only human. In fact she has regularly used the platform to denigrate the Westminster Government and favourably compare Scotland with England, which would maybe not be political if she was a member of any other party but, as the leader of the SNP, this is highly political. It has also been highly effective as the latest opinion polls on support for independence demonstrate. Hence the reason that Nationalists have been howling with rage over the BBC's announcement that they would no longer automatically screen the daily briefings on TV. Sturgeon has been wise enough to distance herself from the criticism but her deputy John Swinney no doubt spoke for her when he voiced his concern over the BBC's decision.

The problem, as Calton sees it, is that those who don't want to see the UK broken up and Scotland plunged into poverty still seem to ascribe some basic moral decency to Sturgeon. They don't realise that when she said "independence transcends" she meant that it transcends EVERYTHING. Not just economics but morals, decency, honesty, integrity. Everything. Nicola Sturgeon would let your Granny die of Covid in a care home if it furthered the cause of Scottish independence ... except she's already tried that and it didn't work. She has no sense of shame and no decency. If she seems to be doing a mea culpa it's only to avoid admitting even bigger failures. This is what Nationalism does to you. It causes women to cover up for sex pests in case it damages 'the cause' and it causes other women to knife them in the back in case they damage 'the cause'. Nothing matters but independence and while Nicola may not have been "enjoying" Covid, she has used the higher profile it has given her to drive a wedge between Scotland and England and increase support for the only thing she really cares about. 

It's time to take the blinkers and the gloves off if we are to defeat the poison of Nationalism in Scotland. No more Mr Nice Guy.

The Smell of Pee

Back in April Calton wrote that Nicola Sturgeon reeked of exceptionalism. Now she stinks of urine - the pee some care home residents had to lie in due to the Scottish Government's mismanagement of the Covid crisis and care homes. Whenever someone dares to raise this issue with the First Minister, she complains that they are trying to make out that she did it deliberately. She plaintively protests that she did her best at the time and that, if mistakes were made, (note the 'if'), they will be examined at some future inquiry. She deeply regrets every death and, really, it's her we should be feeling sorry for because those nasty journalists and opposition politicians are trying to make her out to be a murderess.

No Nicola, the charge is not murder - it's manslaughter. Not intentional, pre-meditated killing but killing through incompetence. At the height of the pandemic you and your hopeless Health Secretary Jeanne Freeman shifted lots of vulnerable elderly patients from hospitals to care homes without testing them while at the same time lots of care home workers were having to stay at home for 14 days. You created a situation where an increase in residents coincided with a decrease in staff numbers and you did nothing to mitigate this. That is incompetence. The results of what you were doing were forseeable - you did not forsee them. The situation was exacerbated by a blanket directive (now deleted) that care home residents should not be moved to hospital if they got Covid.

Sturgeon's hands are not stained with blood - it's pee and no amount of washing will take away the smell.

Nicola is no Boudicca

Calton has stopped listening to Nicola's lunchtime briefings. Her anxiety is palpable and it's infectious. Instead of leading the Scottish people our First Minister is pleading with the Scottish people. It's not a good look. No wonder some nationalists are casting about for another leader and their eye is falling on Sturgeon's predecessor and nemesis, Alex Salmond. The fact that there doesn't seem to be any other obvious candidate highlights the paucity of talent in the SNP. A leadership election in the aftermath of Salmond's resignation in 2014 might have highlighted what is now blindingly obvious even to some SNP members - Sturgeon's ultra-cautiousness and inability to be decisive is a huge drawback. She is a career politician, not a leader. She's the queen of spin in a sharp suit but she is no Boudicca and it is unlikely that she will ever lead the Scots to independence. She just doesn't have what it takes. If she did manage to take Scotland out of the UK we would be a nation of wee sleekit cow'rin tim'rous beasties just like her and we would indeed be too wee, too poor and too stupid to succeed as an independent country because that's what she will have made us.

Basic Geometry for Politicians

Nicola Sturgeon doesn't seem to be very good at maths or science but that doesn't stop her trying to get Head Teachers to square a circle and pour a quart into a pint pot (1.14 litres into a 568ml pot for the young amongst us). She's absolutely wedded to the 2m social distancing rule and so schools have been planning the return of pupils on that basis. Basic geometry dictates that if pupils have to stay 2m apart from each other and the teacher, the maximum class size in an average classroom will be 10 instead of 30. That's why so many schools were, until yesterday, planning on having pupils back one week in three. John Swinney had even invented a term for it - 'blended learning'. Now teachers have had to go back to the drawing board because our populist First Minister realised yesterday morning that the Education Minister's plan was not going down well. You've heard of pester power. Now we have parent power and a hashtag #usforthemScotland. We even have a former First Minister wading into the row.

The result of all this is that Nicola has now learned what happens when two objects collide - the smaller one goes into reverse. Forgetting the 2m rule, Sturgeon now wants kids back at school full-time as soon as possible. If only she wanted businesses back open as quickly, but then economics is another of her weak points. It's not wrong for a politician to listen to people, or for parents to want their kids back at school, but full-time education for all plus 2m separation is an unsolvable equation. Even 1m social distancing makes it impossible. So which is it going to be First Minister? School or social distancing? Calton awaits the answer with interest, as will many businesses.

Angels and Demons

Some time ago, when Jackie Baillie was Shadow Health Minister, Calton took a pop at her for being overweight in a blog post entitled Where Angels Fear to Tread... Well, Jackie is looking pretty angelic now in comparison with current Health Minister Jeane Freeman.

This is the woman who (deliberately in Calton's opinion) tried to mislead the Scottish Parliament over the number of NHS patients transferred from hospitals to care homes at the start of the Covid-19 crisis. She had to apologise. Nicola Sturgeon made excuses for her, saying that she was 'tired'.

Under Freeman's direction the Scottish Government bought up care home beds in order to empty hospital wards. What they failed to do was to ensure that the care homes had adequate PPE and adequate staff to deal with a highly infectious respiratory virus. It took weeks and numerous awkward questions from journalists at Sturgeon's daily briefings before Jeane got her act together with respect to PPE for care homes. At time of writing, the Scottish Government has still not got its act together with respect to regular testing of care home staff, in spite of Nicola Sturgeon announcing two weeks ago that this would happen. Freeman has also still not sorted out the problem of care home staff having to survive on statutory sick pay if they test positive.

Early Scottish Government guidance to care homes and the GPs who look after them said that it was not advised that patients with Covid-19 should be transferred to hospital but be cared for in the care home.  This was subsequently amended but only after the Scottish Government realised that the general population actually care about their old folks and want them to receive the best of care, including hospital treatment when required. How many care home residents could have survived the virus if the early guidance had not stipulated that they be refused transfer to hospital? The blanket issuing of DNRs (Do Not Resuscitate notices) in care homes, sometimes to people without capacity to agree them is also a real cause for concern.

Freeman has defended her actions in the ongoing coronavirus care home deaths scandal, saying that she did her best with the information available at the time. Even if this is true, her best was not good enough. People have died on her watch, some of them unnecessarily. Surely that is grounds for her resignation. Sadly there is no-one of Jackie Baillie's calibre in the SNP to replace Jeane.

PS. When she became Health Minister Jeane said she was going to lead by example and give up the fags. Is she still smoke-free?

Douglas Ross Gets It

When Calton wrote his post on exceptionalism, Dominic Cummings had been the one trying to keep on so-called superforecaster Andrew Sabisky in the light of unsavoury revelations about the latter. Now Cummings has become the story after revelations about his trip to Durham during lockdown and Boris Johnson is desperately trying to keep him on in the face of mounting opposition, not just from the opposition but from members of his own party. Just as Nicola Sturgeon's attempts to keep on Catherine Calderwood made her look weak, so Johnson's attempts are opening him up to ridicule and raising the question of who really governs the country. They also make him look weak.

Cummings has defended his actions in a painful, hour-long press briefing yesterday but a scan through Calton's social media feeds shows very little sympathy for him. He may not have broken the letter of the law but most people feel that he has definitely broken the spirit of it, and the strong government message to stay at home and not undertake any unnecessary journeys. Indeed, at time of writing, that is still the message in Scotland, as Sturgeon was quick to point out in her briefing yesterday.

If the highly unusual briefing by Cummings was intended to draw a line under the affair it has utterly failed, with Moray MP and junior government minister Douglas Ross resigning today and various Scottish Tory MSPs making their fury known. Even Jackson Carlaw has eventually been forced into saying that Cummings should consider his position. Not only has the Domnishambles eclipsed the UK Government's message on Coronavirus, it is preventing the Scots Tories from taking the SNP to task over their poor handling of the crisis in Scotland and is threatening their chances in the Holyrood election scheduled for next year.

Douglas Ross gets that rules apply to everyone without exception, even to pals of the PM. Boris doesn't get it and his ratings are plummeting as a result.